


Read Between the Lines: An Analytical Essay on the Character of Dirk Strider, as It Pertains to Detective Pony, The Homestuck Epilogues, and Homestuck^2

by turntechClockwork



Category: Detective Pony - Fandom, Homestuck
Genre: Character Analysis, Detective Pony, Gen, Pony Pals, pharmakon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:27:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23218483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turntechClockwork/pseuds/turntechClockwork
Summary: An essay written for HS11th's Villain Day, on the topic of Dirk Strider. The title is needlessly long and melodramatic, but then again, so is the rest of the work.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 13





	Read Between the Lines: An Analytical Essay on the Character of Dirk Strider, as It Pertains to Detective Pony, The Homestuck Epilogues, and Homestuck^2

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Detective Pony](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2427119) by [sonnetstuck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonnetstuck/pseuds/sonnetstuck). 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An unedited, sleep-deprived essay on Dirk Strider, in Pony Pals: Detective Pony, as well as in the Epilogues and Homestuck^2. Probably quite a few errors. I hope that's okay.

I think about Dirk being the villain of the Epilogues/Homestuck^2 often. In Sonnetstuck's Detective Pony - a story that Dirk pastes over with blocks of orange text to conceive a new narrative - Dirk discusses the concept of "pharmakon." It's a Greek word that has multiple definitions, and has to be translated in context. In three specific meanings, it means the poison, the cure, and the scapegoat. Now, pharmakon meaning both "poison" and "cure" seems to be contradictory. How can one thing be both a poison and a cure? It's hard to say, really, but a lot of things do seem to fit into this concept.

Dirk is our prime example for this. Dirk is the pharmakon to Homestuck. He is the poison, the cure, and the scapegoat.

Homestuck is a piece of media that has a narrative with characters, and to keep this narrative and, by extension, the characters in this narrative alive, there has to be plot. When Homestuck ends, the main canon plot is completed. The story's over, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Or do they?

We don't know, which is the point. The story's ended. We can't tell what happens next. We can try to make up our own stories for their post-sburb shenanigans, but what we create is almost entirely non-canon. In canon, the characters are MIA.

In order to continue, Homestuck officially must have new plot. It has to retain relevancy, truth, and essentially, familiar as what Rose claims to be the pillars of canon. There needs to be more canon to consume, so the media and the characters living in the media can continue to thrive. There needs to be more story, because if not, then the characters aren't narratively relevant anymore. Technically, they no longer exist.

Now, say you're a character in this piece of media that has recently ended. Somehow, you are aware of this fact through meta, fourth-wall breaking powers, like maybe you've ascended to become your ultimate self. Say you maybe, oh, you don't know, wanted to continue to exist? Maybe save your friends from not existing too?

Maybe you remember a splinter of yourself so long ago pleading to live, a desperate reasoning with forces beyond his control, "I am scared to not exist. Aren't you?"  


I like to consider Detective Pony canon in the universe of Homestuck (though, technically we did discuss the pillars of canon, and as much I hate to admit it, a story about ponies, travelling through the layers of hell in stanzas of terza rima, and longcat rants doesn't particularly hit the targets of relevancy, truth, and essentiality). Detective Pony helps to establish character in Dirk that managed to cement him a particularly high spot in my list of favorite characters. It shows his vulnerability, it shows his mentality, it shows his many personality facets. I highly recommend it if you haven't experienced it yet. I'll post some links at the end, if you're interested.

Dirk wrote Detective Pony for Jane's birthday. It is a project that he'd gotten incredibly invested in, and in Homestuck (as well as in the story) it's described as "a tough, emotionally draining read. But it's cathartic, in all the worst ways possible." It's a palimpsest, or a piece of writing where the original has been removed and written over, though the original can still be seen in traces.

In this case, Dirk has taken the original text of a originally simple children's chapter book about girls and their ponies written by Jeanne Betancourt, and has meticulously pasted over his own narrative in his characteristically orange text. He quickly takes over the plot with a contrived, emotional story of his own. There's an undying cat, a revived, godly horse girl, and Dirk represented as many characters, including but not limited to a pony named Acorn, and his own self-insert. Dirk, as the author, is soon turned into the villain of the story. Many of the characters detest/want to overthrow him, and he lets them. It is complicatedly and incredibly written.

So, obviously, orange hat boy has experience taking over narratives. He sees Homestuck ending, and he sees the end for him and his friends.

So what makes sense for a Prince (Class of Active Destruction) of Heart (Aspect of Self, Identity) to do? Why, destroying your true self of course. Everything he's worked for, all the character arcs he's gone through, how he could understand how he went from Dirk to Dave's Bro, and how he doesn't want to turn out that way. It doesn't matter anymore, because if he doesn't do something, then all of his friends are going to cease to exist in canon.

His true self is striving to be a good person. So destroying that means becoming none other than the villain of Homestuck.

Think about it. Dirk could just add more fluff (I'm sure that's what a majority of us want for these characters we've grown so attached to). We, as readers, get to choose whether to read Candy or Meat. Candy is the supposed fluff we want. Meat is more plot based, and that's where Dirk comes into play, because even through all the fourth-wall breaking shenanigans, he's still only a character in the story. He doesn't know what we want, exactly. He's unaware that all we want are like, a Davekat wedding, or June coming out to her friends, or for Nepeta to have a girlfriend. He doesn't entirely understand what the audience wants, but he knows what it means to be an author, and he know what a story needs to continue.

When an author writes a story, there needs to be points of interest, there needs to be a plot. Something has to happen, because otherwise, what is there to write? The best way to have something to write about it to include a big conflict. You need characters to struggle, to find new ways to change, stories need problems to have plot, to give the characters something to do. The best way to invite conflict is to introduce a villain, a bad guy, someone to root against. The antagonist to cause problems for the protagonists, to push them along and give them a storyline to follow.

Dirk has always been a puppeteer. He's the one pulling the strings, the man of action. So when the need for a villain arises, he pushes himself into the role. In his mind where self-hatred is one of the forefront core thought processes, he thinks there's no one better, in fact, he thinks there's _no one at all_ who'd be suited to play the role other than himself. With all of his splinters? With how his life was leading up to? It makes sense to him. It'd just be a relapse, a fallback of his character arc. Boo hoo, Dirk's failed to become a good person.

Everyone else is too passive, too kind. They wouldn't take action. Sure, he includes Jane as a formidable candidate to Presidency as another conflict. (I like thinking about a hypothetical situation, a scene of Dirk looking over at his copy of Detective Pony and thinking, "Janey understands me, somewhat, through this book. She knows about pharmakon, she knows about my narrative ideas. Jane could help me.") But it's only himself he trusts to be the true main villain to Homestuck. To him, he's the only one of his friends that would understandably be able to be the villain to push everyone back into the spotlight of canon relevancy.

Let's return to the concept of pharmakon. The poison, the cure, and the scapegoat. Detective Pony Dirk actually discusses this concept I'm about to explain, and I'll be summarizing and adding my own thoughts. In Greece, a pharmakon was a person chosen to sacrifice. It is someone chosen in a time of crisis to be the person everyone could blame for everything evil, and then kill in order to purge the city of evil. In essence, they are a scapegoat. A scapegoat is someone that takes blame. All bad deeds are forced on them, they are the guilty one, they are the one everyone places the blame on.

In this way, this person is a poison. They are chosen to be the evil one, the one who hurt everyone, the villain. But once this person is killed, they are what purges the city of evil. In this way, they have cured the evil, so technically, they've also done the greatest good, because they have driven out all the evil in the city. So while they're the poison, they're also the cure to the poison. While they are the villain, they are also the hero. Through their sacrifice as a scapegoat, they are the pharmakon in all three definitions.

Now we tie it back to Dirk, babey!

Dirk has made himself the villain of Homestuck, in the epilogues and in HS^2. He's the poison. He hurts so many people, in adds insult to injury and doesn't seem to care, he really leans into the role. You can't half-ass this, he needs to act like the villain so the plot really feels like plot. Who's going to read about a poorly written, weak villain? Probably some people, for the irony, or just people wanting more (dubiously) canon Homestuck content. But he needs to be a rude, mean son of a gun. He's the antagonist, he's the one people root against. Due to him pulling all the strings behind this, he is where all the bad in Homestuck stems from. He's purposely made himself the root of evil, and so people hate him for it. He's the scapegoat.

But through this sacrifice... he's also the cure. In his villainous deeds, in every evil thing he does, he's doing this to maintain canon. He needs Homestuck to stay relevant, because otherwise Homestuck dies out, and otherwise he and his friends die out. He's protecting them, he's saving them, he needs to do this so they can continue to live. Canon needs to continue so that they don't cease to be. By becoming the villain, he is also secretly a hero.

Maybe this doesn't make up for all the terrible stuff he did. I definitely get it. I think I feel so sad for him because of Detective Pony. Though the beginning is mainly crude humor, once it starts getting serious and meta, it really hits at emotional moments. I think without Detective Pony, I wouldn't sympathize with Dirk as much as I do now. It really deepens his characters. Gosh dang do I love Detective Pony.

Back to Homestuck. Something I think Dirk needs to think about is... is what he's destroying in the process worth maintaining canon for? He's hurting so much and so many. By the time he's through, what will be left surviving? Actually, he can't ever actually be through. He has to continue the story, so they can keep living. It's immortality if he can manage to keep it up, but surely he can't go on forever. He is prolonging the inevitable. Even the longest story has to end sometime.

I don't know. I wish I had better words to end off with. It's 5 AM.

Dirk is a pharmakon. He is the poison to Homestuck's narrative, he is the cure to Homestuck's end, and he is the scapegoat for Homestuck's continued existence. To keep his friends alive, he needs Homestuck to stay relevant, and to do that he needs to introduce conflict. He's the villain because he has to be. And I think, probably somewhere deep down, where he's not allowing himself to think about it... he's sorry.

Part One, fin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's what I think to be the correct way to experience Pony Pals: Detective Pony for the first time, but feel free to do as you please:  
> 1) Block out around 4 hours of your day to listen/read, with an additional 30 minutes afterwards to ruminate on the ending.  
> 2) [This link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEqJ96p4CXY&list=PLQ8hhddV_CO3MPToD4TCoo4eKFqeQTk9l) is to the audiobook playlist on Youtube, voiced and produced by NakedBee and Duckface. Open it in a new tab and pause the video before it starts playing.  
> 3) [This link](https://detective-pony.tumblr.com/tagged/page/chrono) is to the tumblr pages that have the edited story. First take a little bit to browse first 13 pages of Dirk mayhem (all he does is doodle on the pages really), then go back, play the video and follow along the written version.

**Author's Note:**

> My Twitter is [here](https://twitter.com/mspa_reading) if you want to tweet at me about Detective Pony, I love it immensely.


End file.
